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North Korea says doesn't need energy aid from Japan
20 Mar 2007 00:56:19 GMT
Source: Reuters
SEOUL, March 20 (Reuters) - North Korea accused Tokyo of trying to scuttle nuclear disarmament talks and said it does not want energy aid from Japan as a part of a deal to end Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme, its media reported on Tuesday.

Japan has said it will not give full-scale economic aid to North Korea or establish diplomatic ties unless a feud over Japanese citizens kidnapped by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies has been resolved.

"The DPRK (North Korea) does not care about whether Japan gives energy assistance to it or not because it would not affect much the DPRK's economic development," the North's official KCNA news agency said.

North Korea repeated its claim that the abduction issue had been solved and called on Japan to pay compensation and apologise for its brutal 1910-1945 rule over the Korean peninsula and forcing Korean women to be sex slaves for Japan's troops.

"The DPRK strongly demands Japan stop talking about the 'abduction issue' but redeem the crimes committed by it in the past which are more horrendous than the issue and sincerely implement the agreement reached at the six-party talks," it said.

It said the breakdown of the bilateral talks last month was due to: "The right-wing forces of Japan who do not want the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula and the normalisation of the bilateral relations."

About two weeks ago, Japan and North Korea cut short talks on formally setting up diplomatic ties after wrangling over historical differences.

Impoverished North Korea, which depends heavily on handouts from China and South Korea to feed its people and power its anaemic economy, has wanted Japan ousted from six-way nuclear talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents had abducted 13 Japanese. Five were repatriated. Japan has demanded the return of any survivors, but Pyongyang said the other eight are dead.

The latest round of the nuclear talks opened on Monday in Beijing. At the last round in February, North Korea agreed to begin shutting down its main reactor and source of weapons-grade plutonium for energy aid.
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A farmer waters a vegetable field in Yingtan, in central China's Jiangxi province April 13, 2007. The acreage of China's arable land continued its fall in 2006, down 306,800 hectares in the first 10 months of 2006 to 121.8 million hectares, a notch away from the country's target of maintaining at least 120 million hectares of arable land, China Daily reported. CHINA OUT



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